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I was fairly overweight (BMI bordering on obese) and encourage frank and constant discourse around the health consequences of obesity, and disagree with the nor

I was fairly overweight (BMI bordering on obese) and encourage frank and constant discourse around the health consequences of obesity, and disagree with the normalization of obesity in e.g. fashion magazines and advertisements. Seeing such discourse led me to finally take some action. We shouldn't be intentionally mean (and I agree there's too much of that), but they're literally killing themselves with their lifestyle. It's something that they should be strongly dissuaded from by their peers and by society, for their own sake and society's sake. It must be the leading health crisis in rich countries right now, now that smoking is unpopular. It's not 100% the obese person's fault: food companies have hacked their dopamine systems with added sugar/salt/MSG/etc (similar to social media companies hacking attention mechanisms), obesity is largely genetic (in terms of the tendency to overeat and ability to satiate hunger), obesity is likely triggered by some underlying mental health issue (e.g. depression), and evolution programmed us to eat us much as we can get our hands on. It's hard to fight biology. But it's not accurate that obesity is just a metabolism issue. Obese people take in too many calories, usually from added sugars and carbohydrates. They may take in 2400 calories a day when their BMR is 1600, and the chronic impact is obesity.

dathinab 6y ago
I think part of the problem of this discussion are differences in the country we live in because of how people are treated in the given area. I.e. in the environment I grew up obesity was not very common and general seen as unhealthy and not good looking. In turn many of the people which are still obese are people where just eating less and doing more sport doesn't really work and in turn telling them to just do so is problematic. But on the other side going just to a different part of Germany some degree of obesity caused by drinking to much beer, unhealthy food and maybe to little sport is quite common in the idk. 50+ generation.
- hntrader 6y ago
  > where just eating less and doing more sport doesn't really work I can understand it not working because it's hard to eat less when attempting to lose weight (something I've struggled with for a long time), but I know if I eat less calories, then I reliably lose weight. I can drop 2lb a week very easily by maintaining a deficit, but I regularly fail in my long-term objective and bounce back when I get stressed and overeat back over 2000 calories/day. So at least for me (most/all people?), it's not that eating less doesn't work, it's the inability to do that (genes/depression/stress/environment/whatever) which is the root cause.

dathinab 6y ago

I think part of the problem of this discussion are differences in the country we live in because of how people are treated in the given area. I.e. in the environment I grew up obesity was not very common and general seen as unhealthy and not good looking. In turn many of the people which are still obese are people where just eating less and doing more sport doesn't really work and in turn telling them to just do so is problematic. But on the other side going just to a different part of Germany some degree of obesity caused by drinking to much beer, unhealthy food and maybe to little sport is quite common in the idk. 50+ generation.

hntrader 6y ago
> where just eating less and doing more sport doesn't really work I can understand it not working because it's hard to eat less when attempting to lose weight (something I've struggled with for a long time), but I know if I eat less calories, then I reliably lose weight. I can drop 2lb a week very easily by maintaining a deficit, but I regularly fail in my long-term objective and bounce back when I get stressed and overeat back over 2000 calories/day. So at least for me (most/all people?), it's not that eating less doesn't work, it's the inability to do that (genes/depression/stress/environment/whatever) which is the root cause.